The 6 Weirdest Things That Statistically Lower Crime

You might not have noticed this in the middle of all of the bad news that floods the daily headlines, but crime in the U.S. is at its lowest point in pretty much ... well, ever. It's been steadily falling since the early '90s. And nobody knows why.

Of course, such a giant, sweeping trend doesn't have just one simple cause, but studies have shown that it might have a few shithouse-crazy ones. So if you're feeling safer these days, science says it could be thanks to things like ...

#6. Getting the Lead Out of the Environment

Lead poisoning is one of those things our ancestors dealt with so thoroughly that we have trouble today realizing what a problem it was. But when our grandparents and great-grandparents were young, lead was in every-damn-thing from gasoline to paint to baby formula (OK, so maybe not that last one). And since lead exposure causes all sorts of fun things, like schizophrenia and low IQ, leaded-up babies were more likely to drop out of school and end up with prison records and regrettable tattoos.

Nevin studied the criminal histories of nine countries and found that in each case he could link significant crime drops with that country's campaign to eliminate childhood lead poisoning. In his own words, "65 to 90 percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead." You could say that the timing was just coincidence, but each country Nevin studied conducted those campaigns at different points in time, and in every case, 20 years after lead poisoning rates fell, crime started to fall. Another study in 1990 showed that U.S. counties with high lead levels had four times the murder rate of counties with low lead exposure.

GettyShotgun victims are also very likely to have high lead exposure.

Now, as with every entry on this list, we'll never know for sure how true this was -- you could just as easily say that the type of country or era that is advanced enough to successfully deal with environmental problems is also capable of fighting crime. Still, it makes us wonder what stuff we're all being exposed to right now that will turn out to have been making us crazy. We're imagining a future earth in chaos, roving bands of savages driven mad by a decade of iPhone fumes.

GettyIf not the iPhones themselves.

#5. Crack Cocaine Scaring Everyone Straight

Did you ever sneak a cigarette while under age and get caught by your mom or dad? And if so, did said parent attempt to steer you away from smoking by forcing you to go into the closet and smoke a whole pack? Probably not, but we keep hearing people in movies say it happened to them (if it happened to you, holy shit, you should probably have called Child Protective Services -- that shit's almost certainly illegal). The point is, it's supposed to scare kids off smoking by making them smoke so much, so fast, that they get violently sick from it. From then on, they supposedly won't even want to look at a cigarette.

It sounds like something that surely has never worked on anyone, but researchers think this principle actually does apply to crack cocaine.

Getty"And if you want any more blow, well ... then I suppose I've failed terribly as a parent."

You have to keep in mind that plummeting crime rates are falling off from highs reached thanks to the crack epidemic -- this sudden invasion of an impossibly addictive yet dirt cheap drug caused homicide, robbery and drug arrests to explode in the mid-'80s. But then the rates suddenly started plummeting in 1991, and kept going down. While that's good news for everyone, it's also kind of baffling. Crack is as addictive as ... well, crack. Wouldn't it just keep spreading like a disease until every inner city neighborhood is full of addicts? What stopped it?

GettyBears?

Apparently, crackheads did. That is, the fear of becoming one. A pair of researchers in New York say that crack fell out of popularity because its effects on people are freaking terrifying, even to other drug users. Pot brings up the pleasant image of comfy couches and junk food. Alcohol calls up crowded bars and raucous house parties. You can even convince yourself that heroin and powder cocaine are glamorous, thanks to their use among rich rock stars and actors. But crack? It pretty much just makes you think of constantly broke, malnourished junkies offering oral sex to their dealer in exchange for one more hit.

So, the idea is that a lot of the potential market for the drug saw how rapidly it turned people into shrunken zombies, and backed slowly away in horror. They then switched back to pot, which in addition to not turning you into a crackhead also doesn't spawn the same kind of brutal turf wars and desperate, violent users. When the crack left, so did the attendant handguns and robberies that served to feed all those crack habits. Inner city crime plunged and snack food industry profits soared.

"But wait," you say. "What about meth? I've seen Breaking Bad, there are more people doing drugs now than ever! And killing each other for it!"

"And it's freaking awesome!"

Well, the thing is ...

#4. There Is Suddenly Plenty of Drugs for Everyone

It's perfectly natural to think "More drugs = more crime." Illegal drugs are, by definition, sold by criminals. More drugs equals more criminals, which equals more crime, right? But it's not that simple.

People kill each other over drugs for the same reason they kill each other over oil, or diamonds: because they're worth a huge amount of money. In 1988, the cocaine trade was worth an estimated $140 billion. If that doesn't drive home how blow-crazy America was during the late '80s, we'll put it another way: Cocaine was worth 2 percent of the entire U.S. GDP. And only, like, a third of that can be pinned on Robin Williams. At around the same time, America's murder rate reached its highest level in recorded history -- and almost none of that can be blamed on Robin Williams.

GettyFashion is always the first victim.

But when the mid-'90s rolled around, coke dropped in value faster than hammer pants. By 1994, the price of blow was at its lowest point ever and, holy shit would you look at that, the murder rate dropped by 50 percent as well.

This baffled the DEA, who'd been busting coke dealers left and right in the hopes of making the drug less accessible (and thus more expensive). But it appears that all they actually succeeded in doing was forcing drug lords to smuggle smarter and diversify. Then in came meth, which anybody can make in their garage for a few bucks, and a new jump in popularity for pain pills. And, if high school economics taught us anything besides how to sleep with our eyes open, it's that introducing more choice into a market lowers prices.

Getty"Keep three degrees of separation between you and the product, and never carry more than you can swallow."